Community Service Learning


a. When you think about your community, how does it make you feel (proud,
angry, happy, inspired, etc.)? What about the resources? What about the
problems?
I feel pretty content with my community. I think that we live in anice, safe nieghborhood, and I am very happy here. Malden has lots of great resources like the schools, and a nice library. There aren't mnay problemss around Malden. There have been some shootings and such, and it seems like that kind of thing has been increasing a lot lately. But it still feels pretty safe around here. Alsothere are many school realted issues as well. Bullying and grades are a problem, but not as much as in other cities and towns near here.

b. How can some of the problems be addressed with the resources?
I think that people should go to school and not spend their time doing bad things like killing people or something like that. There are so many better places to go around Malden and things to do besides bully other people or waste time being stupid. People who have trouble studying ahould try going to the Malden Library because there are many good resources there.

c. What makes something a community?
People who live together in a place make up a community. TO have a good community, the poeple should work together to help each others problems and stuff. People in a community should be able to trust and rely on each other for help and support.

d. Did we see similar problems/resources in different communities?
Yes, there are also city libraries in other towns as well ad other good resources to help people. And there are also similar problems in other communites. IN other cities, there are problems even worse then in Malden. Like in Dorchester or Worcester there are like daily shootings around town, and in Malden it is much safer.


12/15/10
Do Now-
What are some issues that you think we should consider trying to work on? Why?
The enviroment, and recycling because that is really important. Our enviroment is going bad.
Keeping teens in school and lowering the teen pregnancy rate.
Bullying
Grades
4th lunch
home for abused animals
early release schedules
clean enviroment
paper shortages
equality for people
variety in lunches
better salads


Bullying
Bullying is a very important issue. Many people are threatened and abused both physically and emotionaly every day. People are harassed and made fun of. A lot of bullying goes on in school. This is not right because school should be a safe haven for people, where they don't have to feel threatened, because the school is a place for learnig and education, and all people have the right to a safe learning enviroment. Bullying is continuesly becoming a more important problem. many children are feeling insecure about themselves, have low self esteem, and even committing suicide. If we don't do something now to stop bullying, more people will continue to suffer and maybe even die.

Recyling
Good for the enviroment and people.

Summary
We narrowed down our choices to bullying and recycling. I argued on behalf of bullying as the most important issue, and then heard another person's view from the recycling side. Bullying is an importnat issue because of school distractions and suicide rates. Recycling is also an important issue because everyone is affected by it and our earth is dying. After hearing both sides of the argument we voted again between the two choices to determine which one we would do. The clear winner was recycling.

The outcome of the project should be that there is a recycliing bin in every teacher's classroom, and also for the recycling rates in the school to go up in the end.
Recycling should become a habit for people.
Get everyone to recycle.
Learn/educate others about recycling
Spread knowledge to get others to recycles, provide options
Save money, enviroment, everyone recycles

Recycling
Recycling is the process of collecting used materials"waste" and processing them so they can be used again as something else instead of becoming harmfull landfill.
Paper, glass, aluminum, batteries, and plastic are the most recycled materials.
There are three stages of recycling. First, the recycled products are collected, processed and sorted out to be made into new products. Then, new products are manufactured by the recycled oject. Finally, the recycled and newly manufactured items are bought by customers.
Recycling saves energy. When products are made from recycled materials, the energy used is much lower than the amount of energy needed to make the same item from freash, new materials.
Recycling saves enviromental conditions and reduces pollution. When new items are made, toxic gases and other stuff is created which hurt the enviroment. With recycling, there is less energy used and less chemicals are launched into the air.
Recycling saves natural resources because less nature is used. Ex. Recycle a newspaper and save a tree because the paper will be made into another thing that would otherwise be made from a tree.
There are economical benefits. MOney is saved that would be used on making items out of new materials. It is cheaper to reuse materials.
Saves space for waste disposal. Most landfill sites are filled with trash. Reduce the amount of trash gby recycling them instead of throwing them away.
Interesting Facts ABout Recycling
Glass can be recycled forever.
Styrofoam is unrecyclable
ONe gallon of motor oil can contaminate one million gallons of water
World electricity demand is expected to double between 2000 and 2030. The greatest increase will occur in the developing world, and the most rapid growth will occur in people's homes
Almost half of the average home's energy consumption is used for heating
Each of us uses approximately one 100-foot-tall Douglas fir tree in paper and wood products per year
Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy needed to produce new aluminum from raw materials. Energy saved from recycling one ton of aluminum is equal to the amount of electricity the average home uses over 10 years
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours
Americans throw away enough aluminum every month to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet
Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day
Americans throw out enough iron and steel to supply all the nation’s automakers on a continuous basis
When you toss out one aluminum can you waste as much energy as if you’d filled the same can half-full of gasoline and poured it into the ground
Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap Texas
Every day Americans use enough steel and tin cans to make a steel pipe running from Los Angeles to New York... and back. If we only recycle one-tenth of the cans we now throw away, we'd save about 3.2 billion of them every year
The average American still spends 8 full months of his/her life opening junk mail
$1 out of every $11 Americans spend for food goes for packaging

Sources-http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html